


Trace

by dreamiflame



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Cutting, Gen, Knifeplay, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-17
Updated: 2003-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/pseuds/dreamiflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone just wants to feel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trace

**Author's Note:**

> Set before the second movie. Thanks to Sara for the beta.

Persephone bled in the same way she did everything: deliberately and full of grace. The blood flowed smoothly down her white arm and hand and fell, drop by crimson drop, onto the floor. She hadn't cut herself deeply enough to do any real damage, just a trace, a trickle, to mar the stark perfection of the cream carpet.

Her husband entered behind her and stopped, the red on the carpet catching his attention. He didn't ask, "What are you doing?" though the knife was still in her hand as she turned to face him. "That carpet is expensive," he scolded, and Persephone remembered how easily the knife had sliced through her skin. His skin, she knew, would be no more of an obstacle. The Twins had given her the knife, sharp, perfect and deadly, when she'd asked for it this morning after breakfast. "So's your dress," he went on, and plucked at the fabric.

Persephone wanted to scream and cut him, to see if he, like her, was still capable of so base a thing as bleeding. Instead she smiled and brought the knife to her wrist, the wrong way. "I don't like the carpet," she said, and drew the knife across. It was warm on her tongue, salty but unappealing, and blood was drying, sticky and unpleasant, at her elbow, but she had the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. "And I don't like my dress," she told him, stepping closer. She kissed him and he made a face at the taste of her mouth and she sighed, dropping the knife into the spreading stain.

She went into the bathroom to wash off the blood, and deliberately tore her gown into rags as she took it off. Persephone flung the shreds into the corner and stepped into the white marble shower. The blood swirled away down the drain, and the flesh of her arm was flawless and smooth. The carpet was clean when she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and a cloud of steam, and the knife was nowhere to be seen. There was no trace left that anything had ever happened.

Something, Persephone knew to her very bones, or whatever served her body as bones, something had to change.


End file.
